Count Your Lucky Scars
by rainydaylovers
Summary: When the Joker finds Elizabeth Shire one afternoon, she's sharp and dark enough for his taste. So he takes her in, and they become a twisted kind of friends and lovers...But Liz isn't quite sure if she can live with his murderous, sharp-witted existence..
1. Smile for the Camera

Chapter One

She was walking, leisurely, along the bank of the river. People pedaled by on bicycles, slick with sweat and shimmering summer heat. Elizabeth Shire turned, feeling a presence slightly behind her. Sure enough, there was a man ambling sure-footedly along the path behind her, almost gliding, his head down under a black, elegantly-brimmed hat. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt with the collar folded neatly, dark dress pants and a skinny black tie knotted loosely about his neck. Hands in his pockets, he seemed to know where he was going, though his pace suggested no one was expecting him so he could arrive when he pleased. Elizabeth got a grim feeling that the man most likely lived his whole life like that—with a purpose, but a purpose no one else understood, and as a man who lived by his rules and his rules alone. Soon she would learn that his only rule was to not have rules.

"Nice day, isn't it?" he said, loudly but calmly. Liz looked about herself, and finally decided that yes, he was talking to her.

"Yes, beautiful weather," she replied.

"I'd hate for a lovely woman such as yourself to be indoors on a day like this, Miss…"

"Shire. Elizabeth Shire," she responded. "And who might you be?"

"I might be someone you've heard of…"

The man finally lifted his head for the first time, and she felt her breath catch as his deep, violent eyes locked with hers. His face was absolutely covered in smeared makeup—white painted-on skin, eyes circled with the darkest of blacks, a blood-red, frightening smile drawn all the way up his cheekbones. And, inside the lines of scarlet, greasy facepaint, were scars, unevenly stitched up into a grotesque smile. You could tell, by the way his eyes glimmered dangerously, laughingly, that he sliced-on grin he wore was his own doing.

"They call me the Joker, doll."

"I don't believe in you," Elizabeth said after a long pause, after her heart had settled back into its usual rhythm. He raised an eyebrow, leering at her.

"Don't believe in me? I'm standing right here, baby. Touch my skin, hear my voice. I'm every bit as real as you are."

"Oh, I believe you're the Joker. I believe you exist, and all. But I don't believe what you say you are—a villain, a destroyer of society. Sure, you kill some people, you ruin some lives, you scare the wits out of Gotham City. You even have the guts to come out in public in broad daylight. It's liking you're _daring_ them to catch you." Elizabeth licked her lips, knowing she had his full attention. She steadied herself on a branch to stop from trembling. "You're always breaking hopes, being as unpredictable as you can, killing your own men, even. You're bold, you're fearless, you're insane. But it's all just a game; you're living, breathing killing—all just to defeat Batman." He blinked at her, seductive, a laughing grin sparkling in his eyes. She continued.

"But see, personally, I don't think you can do it. I don't think you can kill him. I mean, of course you're strong enough, smart enough, reckless enough. You're completely capable, and you could walk away with a clear conscience. But he's like your other half—the yin to your yang, the good to your bad, the guy who makes things hard, and fun, for you. You just like to light a match and watch the world burn, and he thinks he's the big bad fireman to come beat you up and put out the flames. But you love 

the blood, even when it's your own; so you guys just hang out of motion, caught in the balance, fighting and fighting but never quite winning or losing."

"So what's your point?" The Joker looked at her quizzically, intrigued, bemused.

"If you killed him, yeah, it'd be fun for a while. Sit in the turmoil while the city's all strung up and freaked out. Gotham would be nothing but chaos for months, years, maybe. But once everyone's caught their breath and settled down, there's no more fear. And sure, you could stir things up and scare people, but it'd be too easy. For you, where's the fun in stealing, killing, torturing, if no one tries to stop you? Why bother if nobody gets angry, just scared? Seeing that little white flag of surrender go up is only fun for a few minutes, until you realize complete control was never what you really wanted."

Liz looked up, breathing hard, to see that the Joker was grinning maniacally, his eyes alight with darkness and cruel laughter.

"You, my dear, are a genius."

"You know how many times people have said that to me, hired me, and then fired me about a week later when my brilliant thoughts got a bit too negative for their taste?" she muttered.

"Ah, and with a sense of humor, too!" he cackled, taking her by the arm and whisking her away.

"You'll fire me too, pretty soon, but not the same way. Once I get a little too dark for you, you'll ditch me just like the others, but there will be considerably more blood."

"Baby," he said, taking the wheel as Elizabeth closed the Joker's black, expensive car door and slipped down into the seat, "things are never too dark for me."


	2. Autumn

Chapter Two

"This is Janet Robinson, bringing you live news out of our chopper here. It seems the Joker has started a fire, for which the reasons are unknown. The fuel for this fire is a huge pile of bills, which equal up to over 200,000!" Janet leaned to one side and towards the camera, giving Gotham viewers a glance of the fiery mess far below the helicopter. She pushed her long, straight dark hair out of her face and switched the microphone to her left hand.

"As you can see, the flames are quite high. But the question on everyone's minds is, after going through the violent trouble of robbing Gotham's largest and most heavily guarded banks, why would he burn the money?"

The Joker lurched from the shadows, brows raised and hands up in frustration. Janet shrieked and the cameramen fumbled. "It's never about the money," he spat, "it's about sending a _message._" Clamping a hand over Janet Robinson's mouth, the Joker cackled straight into the camera and shot a fierce look at the men around him. "Get this all on tape," he said. "And don't try anything…funny."

He turned back to the terrified woman. "So, Janet, what do you think of my little bonfire?" She squirmed beneath his iron grip, her green eyes flashed wide. "Aw, baby, don't be _shy._"

Flicking open his trusty knife, he leaned a bit harder into her.

"So, fill me in, dollface. What are we in, eh?"

"H-helicopter," she choked.

"Mmm, yeah. And it's a long way down, wouldn't you say?" Janet nodded vaguely, trembling.

"It's summer now," he remarked, spreading his free leather-clad hand as if in awe. "Pretty blue skies, other than when I fill them up with smoke and fear." He laughed. "But it's been a while since Gotham lived without smoke or fear. So, you know what season comes after summer, right?"

"Fall…" Janet muttered, trying to figure out what he was up to.

"I want you to read my hand signals and say them out loud."

He pressed his body against hers threateningly, as her emerald eyes flickered over his scars. Gruesome, carelessly stitched, they marked a leering grin spread, quite literally, from ear to ear. He raised a gloved finger and pointed to his own unblinking eye, rimmed with coal-black makeup.

"_I._"

_Am, _he mouthed.

"_Am,_" she breathed.

The Joker made two of his fingers walk across his other hand.

"_Going._"

He held up two fingers.

"_To_," Janet said.

"Oh, and baby, what was it again that you said came after summer?"

With that, he tore the helicopter door open and shoved the screaming woman into the open air. Her clothes plumed around her as she fell, tumbling through the skies drenched with grey and singed with the black burn of smoke. The other men leaped towards the Joker, only one of them still holding his camera with shaking, fisted fingers.

"I thought I said no funny business!" he roared, slicing his glinting blade across the first attacker's throat. As the first man collapsed to the floor, arteries severed and blood water-falling from 

his neck, the Joker thrusted another man against the metal helicopter wall, digging the tip of his knife into the man's cheek.

"So, who's up for a little game of cat and mouse?"

The helicopter lurched, then steadied, as the Joker put his arm all the way through the pilot's stomach and pressed his bloody fingers onto a button on the control panel. Autopilot took over. The summer evening sky ripped in half with the blood-red screams of many lives being taken. Gotham City stirred restlessly below, children wailing, adults locking their doors. Parents could offer no comfort to the images of the Joker's twisted, painted smile. The live news broadcast spread terror in a chaotic wave that enveloped all of Gotham in a few minutes. People pointed through windows at the distant flames still surging, the helicopter grazing the tops of buildings in the dusky sky. The Joker's face flashed onto the screens of anyone who still dared to watch. He licked his lips, ran a hand through his hair, and cleaned his now-threateningly red knife on his purple jacket.

"Oh, by the way, my good people of Gotham, the cat won." He grinned furiously and clicked a button on the camera. The news channel became nothing but blackness and static.

The Joker stretched, yawned and let out a raspy purr to the watching clown-masked henchmen. His eyes glittered tremendously, he raised his face and wiped at a bloodstain on his jacket.

"My work here is done."

Tonight, every in Gotham was a mouse—and their hole in the wall was crumbling.


	3. Pick a Card

Chapter Three

Gotham was a flurry of panic and unrest. Children stayed inside, their mothers trying to distract them with hot soup and old movies. But it was obvious, in the awkward, scared silences, the fathers returning home from work even more tired and grim, the families sliding deadbolts into place with trembling fingers, that things were far from okay. With summer vacation being in full swing, there was nothing to take fear off of people's minds. No one dared to leave the house for shopping, lunches out or to meet with friends. The streets crowded and then emptied, fast, leaving nothing but shaking, homeless vendors and the echoes of hurried footsteps. The city itself was on edge, hair standing up everywhere, people filling the eerie quiet with rattling pill bottles emptying and mindless, complicated television. The air was heavy, stagnant and still, with the heat hanging in angry waves that hardly rested, even at night. Every rustle of leaves or yowl of a stray cat made hair bristle, spines stiffen and tingles of fear spread. Numb, people clutched at their families, clumsily pushing buttons with gnawed-at fingernails to phone up their friends.

Uneasy, unsettled, laughter was nervous and books collected dust. No one quite knew what was going to happen—the police got no sleep, dark circles collecting as they searched for answers, probing for even the slightest trace of a track he might've left. Everyone had known he was out there, but seeing his face, so fast and in such startling detail, hearing his maniacal laughter ricocheting off their own walls… It shook everyone up, and no one slept right after that. Almost the whole city had just watched him kill eight people, and many of them lived close enough to have seen the flames singe the air from out of their cracked windows. He would never leave them alone, not even if he killed Batman, not even if he was killed and buried miles and miles from town. Gotham knew the Joker would haunt the city even when he was long gone.

But none of them wanted to believe that.

The helicopter was found crashed on the shore of a dark-as-pitch lake. Not one soul wondered, even for a moment, if perhaps the Joker was dead among the ruins. Everyone simply turned off their TVs, sat back in their chairs and stared hollowly at the black screen where bad news was delivered to them day after day. No one pretended that the Good side might be winning, that perhaps the devoted policeman had managed to pick up the Joker's trail. No one in Gotham could make themselves think that one of these days, the Joker would die and everything would be okay.

Because as far as they were concerned, he was immortal.

X-x-X-x-X-x

"So, Liz, what're you like?" he asked, slamming his car door and ambling towards the towering mansion.

"Call me Elizabeth," she responded softly, "and I'm an artist, if you will. I just sell little paintings every now and then, and it pays well enough. Otherwise, I work in a coffee shop, a business that thrives," she said pointedly, "anytime people aren't so afraid of the damn _Joker_ that they shutter themselves up at home and empty bottle after bottle of vodka."

"I never quite understood the point of alcohol," he responded absentmindedly, pulling out a ring of keys. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Supposed to make you feel better."

"Does it?" he asked.

"Hardly," Liz scoffed as he unlocked the front door.

"Then what's the point?"

She shot the Joker a look and followed him into the vast mudroom. Inhaling sharply, her gold-rimmed eyes flickered around the room. A glittering chandelier hung delicately from the high, domed ceiling. A spiral staircase tumbled from the second floor on each side of the room. Bookshelves were everywhere, pressed up against the wall, and the rug was an amazing, rich shade of ruby.

"How the hell do you afford all this?" Elizabeth gaped breathily, and then quickly realizing how stupid a question it was.

"Funny how cheap stolen houses are these days," he laughed. A handful of men walked from the kitchen and towards them, clown masks in their hands and arguing over who was getting which room downstairs.

"Boss, there are eight of us and seven beds downstairs," the first of them complained. The Joker rolled his eyes, pulled a gun from his belt and shot the complainer through the forehead.

"As if that wasn't obvious enough," he said half-caringly.

"Hmm, didn't see that one coming," Elizabeth said dryly.

"Who's the chick?" one of the other men drawled, kicking his former comrade's body and pulling a handgun from the dead man's pocket.

"Name's Elizabeth," she spoke, nodding slightly.

"So, Lizzy," the guy said with a yawn, "you his new plaything?"

Liz's brow darkened, and she pulled a gun from the Joker's hand.

"First off, never call me Lizzy," she began, fingering the gun carefully, getting used to the feel of it. "Secondly, I'm _not_ his plaything." Elizabeth fired, steadied herself, and blinked at his slumped body on the rug. The Joker sniggered.

"Sort of pathetic, doll. But you're getting there." He took the gun back, shoved it into his belt, and hopped from the desk he had been sitting on.

"You wanted me to do that," she said numbly.

"Did it feel good?" he asked.

"Well… yeah," she admitted, running a hand exasperatedly through her short blonde hair.

"Then _you_ wanted to do it, doll, not me."

Elizabeth made a face, smudged a finger at her eyeliner, and followed him into the living room.

"What do you even _do_ with all this space, anyway?" she wondered aloud as they both sat down together on the wide, plush cream-colored couch. The Joker threw an arm over her shoulder.

"Pretend I'm rich, pretend I'm in love, pretend I'm not evil, count all the money I steal," he grinned. "What did you expect?"

"So, roleplaying and banking," Elizabeth sighed.

"Don't make it sound like it isn't fun, baby."

She glared at him, and peeled his fingers off her shoulder. He rolled his eyes, put his arm back over her shoulder, heaved a sigh, and looked back over at her. His eyes glinted with mischief.

"Don't be cold. Besides, I'm not home too much. I like to go out and have a bit of _fun._" The Joker's face sparkled with a deviously sharp smile.

"Be honest. How many people have you killed this week?"

"Twelve. Or thirteen, if you count shooting Mr. There-Isn't-Enough-Room-What-Shall-We-Do-Boss?"

"You're sick," she laughed.

"Gee, I haven't heard that one before."

The Joker pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket. "Let me show you a magic trick," he whispered, fanning the cards number-side down.

"Pick a card."

Elizabeth stiffened as her eyes acknowledged, with a jolt, that the card she'd drawn was a joker.

"Put it back anywhere in the deck, doll," he said, his free hand thrown over his eyes. She slipped the card back in. He opened his eyes and shuffled the cards, humming a song under his breath. The Joker pulled a card at random and flicked it at her.

It was the joker.

"This your card?" he asked with a sinful smile. She glared at him.

"I don't believe in magic," Liz huffed.

"Me neither," the Joker laughed, flipping the deck over to reveal that every card, top to bottom, was a joker.

"Cheater!" She couldn't help but laugh.

"I don't cheat, I just bend the rules," he smirked, holding up a card. "By the way, this is my favorite card." There was a bat drawn in black ink in the blank white space, beside the card's joker insignia.

"When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?" he asked.

"A marine biologist," Elizabeth replied.

"Well, see, that's the difference between you and me," he declared, reclining on the couch. "When I was little, I didn't want to grow up."

"You never did," she murmured under her breath.

"Got that right, doll."


	4. Perfect Girl

Chapter Four

She woke up with the sun falling in white-hot stripes on her face, the light cut into lines by the half-closed blinds. Yawning, making a face, she lifted the covers she did not recognize and slid a lean, tanned leg out of bed. Stepping onto a plush champagne-colored carpet, Elizabeth opened her eyes wider and looked around. The ceiling was high, and peach stained-glass, and the windows stretched at least ten feet across the room. Pouting into a long mirror twice her height, she examined the elegant teak-wood four-poster bed and its luxurious cream sheets. One eyebrow raised curiously, she looked down at herself wearing a lace black nightgown she was sure she'd never seen before. Rolling her amber eyes, she sighed and shook shaggy white-blonde hair into her face, wandering towards a dresser.

She slumped down onto a mahogany stool and pulled open drawer after empty drawer.

"If you're going to steal a house with a glass ceiling and put me in it, couldn't you at least bother to get me some clothes?" she muttered darkly, massaging her temples. The huge master closet was empty too, nothing but rows of unused hangers, spare the shoes. A few pairs of extravagant shoes—glittery kitten heels, black paper-doll-esque flats, a cutout wedge cork sandal—were lined up against the back wall of the closet. Elizabeth managed to find a fluffy black robe and slipped on black, lace-up boots that went to her knees. She glanced in the mirror and couldn't help but laugh, looking so risqué and humorously unlike herself. A low catcall whistle interrupted her play, and she whirled to face the Joker and one of his henchmen. The goon's face was contorted with curious pleasure, his eyebrows raised practically off his face and his lips pushed out as his eyes touched every inch of her. Kicking off the shoes and tightening the robe around herself, she glared bitterly at the Joker.

"Could you _knock_?" Liz grumbled.

"If I did, I'd miss the show," he replied. She crossed her arms haughtily, feeling his eyes all over her, too.

"You couldn't manage to get me any clothes?"

The Joker sighed heavily and held out a red, lacy tank-top and a pair of dark blue skinny jeans. A smile flitted across her face.

"Now _that's_ more my style!" Liz exclaimed, prying the clothing from his gloved fingers.

"Why can't it ever be their style to go _naked!_" the Joker howled, falling back onto the bed and gesturing that his companion leave. Elizabeth, taking the cork wedge sandals out of the closet, heard the door shut. She paused for a moment, then relaxed when she heard it was not locked. She turned and saw that, to her annoyance, the Joker was still on the bed.

"Shoo," Elizabeth said, flicking her hand vaguely towards the door.

"I live here," he pointed out.

"Not when I'm getting dressed, you don't."

"Honey," he drawled, "seeing you naked is nothing new, you know. Who do you think dressed that pretty body of yours in a slip last night?"

She froze, holding the jeans to her chest, picturing it. Surely enough, she couldn't remember putting on the nightdress. Her brow stitched up in thought.

Why wasn't she disgusted, knowing his hands had been all over her?

Things were going steadily, increasingly downhill.

Suddenly, she felt his face a hair's breadth away from hers. She blinked dark lashes in confusion, surprise, as his smoldering eyes reached into hers. Elizabeth caught her breath, pushed the hair out of her eyes and leaned backwards; they were still nose-to-nose. His rouge-painted lips parted, softly, his eyes still locked with her eyes.

"_Change._"

Liz's chest heaved with a long, sharp breath and she stumbled back a step. He leaned away, folding his arms over his chest, continuing to watch her with blazing intensity. She turned to have her back to him, evading his intent eyes, tugging anxiously at the strap of her black, fluttering slip.

"Aw, sweetheart, turn around," the Joker said, his voice rough and playful with ragged, shadowed laughter. She shook her head without looking at him. Calmly, he clamped his hand onto her thin, lightly muscled shoulder and spun her around.

"I brought you the clothes, doll. You owe me the favor."

Elizabeth gave him a biting, hawk-eyed look and, without blinking, let the dress fall to pool around her ankles. His eyebrows shot up, amused, aroused. She did not break eye contact, still headstrong, fiercely indignant. His eyes, however, had other plans. He opened his mouth to speak, faze flitting over her hips.

"Don't. Say. _Anything,_" Elizabeth hissed, her eyes dagger-like and warning.

"Anything," the Joker said, voice low and guttural. Taking two long steps, he pressed his body against hers, pinning her against the wall. In one fluid movement, she slid her fingers into his pocket, fit her hand intently around a gun, and pulled it out. Shoving the mouth of the gun against the Joker's head, she looked at him burningly. He grinned, rather than the grimace she'd been hoping for.

"I knew you were the perfect girl."

"Oh, shut up, will you? Don't think I won't blow your brains out," she muttered through clenched teeth.

"You said it yourself, love: I love the blood, even when it's my own."

Elizabeth cursed under her breath and shoved him off her, throwing the gun furiously onto the bed. She stalked over to the heap of clothes and pulled on the tank top. Before she could even button her jeans, he was behind her, lips on her skin, breathing in her ear. Shocks of feeling etched from her jaw all the way down to her stomach. Instead of hearing it, she _felt_ his laughter… pounding from his body to hers, pulsing through her skin like a heartbeat, spreading like a disease through her system. He wrapped his arms around her waist, tugging the zipper of the pants up for her. Liz closed her eyes, fought back a shudder of pleasure, and exhaled loudly.

"I can't win, can I." She said it as more of a statement than a question. He sniggered in her ear, and she could picture his crooked grin without looking at it. His lips closed around her ear, leaving prints of Crayola-red love on her skin. This time, she couldn't restrain the shivering tremor that tingled up her back, snaking fingers of fear and ecstasy all through her.

"No, doll," the Joker murmured, "you can't. I win. I_ always_ win." His voice was triumphant and oh-so-final, as he worked his clever fingers along the gold button of her jeans.

"Elizabeth," he decided, "you're mine."


	5. Poison Apples

Chapter Five

She'd been sitting in the huge kitchen all afternoon, watching the light-as-hair white curtains float from the surprisingly barred windows. Eating crisp red apples (and musing over whether or not the Joker was quite cynical enough to poison one or all of the apples in the large, full bowl), Elizabeth leaned boredly on the glinting granite countertop, glancing silently at the dark scarlet lipstick prints she had left on the shimmery ruby fruit. Suddenly she lost her appetite, tearing her vision from the shining orb sitting tauntingly by her elbow. Knotting her fingers together, Elizabeth hummed softly and watched a cerulean butterfly that had somehow gotten into the house. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a gunshot jolted through the silence, cleanly putting a hole through the large blue butterfly. It fell, and twitched hopelessly for a moment, in sharp, terrible contrast to the glimmer of grey-and-black granite.

"Why do you have to ruin everything beautiful?" Elizabeth grumbled sullenly, her brow raised in annoyance and anger. After another moment, she asked, "And how the hell did your aim get that good?" The Joker laughed, mimed blowing smoke off the barrel of his gun, and sat down beside her.

"Won't you eat these apples? They're in season, and it won't last," he crooned, biting into one himself.

"Apple season is in autumn," she said, and muttered something about poison.

"So, doll, we're off to have some fun. A real wild night out, it'll be." He winked, and Elizabeth glared back at him.

"I'm not coming if you're stealing something," she declared, pushing the bowl of apples away. He grinned deviously at her, looped his arm around her hip and pulled her close as he stood.

"It'd be so much more fun if you came along, dear," he chirped in an annoyingly low voice that showed he was obviously mocking the small-time suburban husbands going on afternoon strolls with their families. Liz rolled her eyes, for the hundredth time since she'd met him.

"Does your whole life have to be a joke?"

"That's why they call me the Joker, isn't it?"

"I'm not coming with you."

He frowned. "Fine," the Joker pouted, "have fun being alone."

Elizabeth groaned.

"Oh, just give me a fucking gun and tell me the plan."

X-x-X-x-X-x

Still cursing herself for being so easily persuaded, Elizabeth sat shotgun in a hotrod-red, shine-painted Mercades. ("Real subtle car, huh?" she'd said. He had only 'tee-hee'd at her and revved the engine.) Despite her antics, he had not given her anything to shoot with, and this bothered her greatly. Elizabeth twiddled her thumbs, anxious and pissed, wishing she knew what the hell the Joker was up to. All she knew, judging by his only explanation being "off to get some revenge", was that some heads were most certainly going to be misplaced. He would probably relish the moment as the fur flied, revv his Mercades happily and blow the whole place up. In other words, the usual.

"Do you have to drive so fast? Someone will notice."

"Time stops for no man," the Joker pointed out matter-of-factly. "And who's there to notice? Everyone's too busy hiding from me in their houses."

"I don't want to be there when the blood river starts flowing." She frowned.

"Just don't meddle," he replied brightly.

"Why not?" Elizabeth asked, rather crossly.

"_You can mess with your brother, but don't mess with a missionary man_," he rasped, with a sparkle in his eye.

"Don't fucking quote Lennox to me!" Liz cried, mouth agape.

"Oh, doll. You're supposed to quote right back at me."

"_I don't care if you don't talk to me, I'm not that kind of girl_," she replied with the beginnings of a smile spreading across her face. The Joker hit the CD button on the car radio.

"What a coincidence," he snickered, as Annie's rough voice belted out the very song Elizabeth had just quoted.

"_I don't need love, forget that stuff, you know that I don't care,_" the Joker mouthed the words. The strap of Liz's tank top fell as she sang, loud and clear. She laughed, crooking her shoulder and surprising him with her smooth voice.

"_I don't need a heartbreaker, fifty-faced trouble-maker, two-timing time-taker, dirty little money maker, muscle-bound cheapskate, low down woman-hater, triple-crossing double-dater, yellow-bellied alligator…_"

"Impressive," the Joker murmured, hitting some button on the wheel and leaning over to kiss her. Elizabeth, still laughing, forgot to flinch away from his touch. He left blood-red streaks on her bronzed skin, pressing kisses onto her neck, slipping his lips onto hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, enjoying the taste and the feel of him. With a jolt, she suddenly realized what she was doing and tore away from him. Wiping the facepaint from her jaw, Elizabeth couldn't help but wish, miserably, humiliatedly, that she could just as easily erase her flushed scarlet cheeks.

"Bastard," she spat furiously, fucking her head in shame. He was pushing that button on the wheel again, which she'd noticed was marked 'auto-drive'. Catching her eye, he leered at her.

"I prefer, 'Oh, Joker, you sexy, clever fox!' But on the other hand, I've heard a lot worse than _bastard_." She couldn't bring herself to be anything more than embarrassed, no matter how hard she urged the anger to bubble up in her.

"It's your fault, really, doll. You shouldn't have gone being all sexy in the clothes I gave you. Besides, you were screaming, 'I need a man!' so I figured I'd satisfy your hungers." Elizabeth sulked, slipping lower into the leather seat.

"Ah, we're here!" the Joker shouted, arousing the men in the back of the car. They nodded, snapping their masks onto their faces.

"Should I, ah, wear one of those too?" Elizabeth asked tentatively, looking at the masks. The Joker shook his head.

"But what if someone sees me?"

"What do you care if a couple of bastards see your face when you come in? Besides, I'm going to cut them up into tiny pieces, anyway."

"What'd they do to you?" Liz asked.

"Sicced a couple of their little mob scum on my ass. I shot the idiots, obviously, but it positively ruined my vacation. So it's time to pay a visit to the guy who wanted me dead in the first place."

Elizabeth grimaced. The mob? This wasn't going to be quick or quiet—and if he wanted to take a blade to them, it would take even longer. She opened her car door and followed behind the Joker. A man dressed in a black, meticulously-ironed suit stepped from the shadows, bearing a gun and a bitter scowl.

"Oh, there you are, Glenn," said the Joker, gloved fingers gripping his knife. "Long time, no see."

"I wish they'd killed you," Glenn spat.

"They always do," the Joker sighed, as his men collected behind him.

"I suppose I'll have to do the dirty work myself." Glenn started to load his pistol.

"Didn't load your gun yet, Glenny? That was foolish," the Joker smiled ear-to-ear. "I'm going to carve your face up like a Jack-O-Lantern."

The Joker's goons formed a half-circle around their boss, who was standing surprisingly tall and proud, fingering his blade. He turned and gave Liz a look that said, _I'm going in, babe._

"_I was born an original sinner, I was born from original sin_," he murmured.

"_If I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done, there'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin._" Elizabeth replied.

The Joker's eyes lingered for a moment. Then he turned and stepped forward. The circle of people closed, echoing an eerie chorus of laughter up into the darkening evening sky. A few henchmen broke off from the group to slip into the building, well-armed and prepared to kill anything that moved. A terrible, unexpected scream broke through the laughter, and the cluster of people parted. Glenn's suit was torn in three places, and his face was glistening with a shade of red that matched the coating of menacing scarlet shine now on the Joker's blade. Elizabeth felt her stomach drop as she noticed, in revolting detail, the twisted wound snaking up Glenn's cheek. Sure enough, half of a grisly smile had been sliced into his flesh. The Joker strolled carelessly over to his side, crouching and laughing darkly in Glenn's face. The man was pleading, spluttering, his speech barely audible with his freshly split cheek. The Joker, ignoring Glenn's cries of despair, shoved the blade into the other side of his enemy's mouth.

Elizabeth's face contorted with a fearful, numbed gape. Eyes flickering in shock, she braced herself against the hood of the car. But it was so terrible, she couldn't look away—the sickening _rip_ of muscles tearing, the way the skin broke apart like a jacket splitting its seams. The blood seemed to pause for a moment before it poured out, and Glenn screamed hollowly. The Joker stood and spat on the writhing man at his feet. Elizabeth stared up into the sapphire sky, edged with black. It seemed that lately, when times were grim, Gotham skipped sunsets altogether. There were no pastel blurs of color anymore—just darkness and more darkness. She clenched her fists and shut her eyes, hearing the wet _shllk_ of a blade being pulled from flesh.

The Joker was only smiling with his scars when he slipped into the driver's seat.

They rode in silence along the dark roads, and stopped in front of the mansion.

"What was it you said to him before you killed him?" Elizabeth finally asked, once all of the henchmen had piled, laughing and bloodstained, out of their cars and into the house.

"I said, '_sweet dreams are made of this_.'"

Elizabeth let out a long breath and looked away.

"He didn't disagree," the Joker whispered.


	6. Death Threats

Chapter Six

Today, Elizabeth woke up to laughter.

Surprise, surprise.

"Look what the cat dragged in!" the Joker exclaimed, bursting through the door. Elizabeth clutched the still-warm sheets to her chest, trying to remember where she was. With a groan, she blinked, took one look at his freshly-applied makeup, and dove back into the pillows.

"Aw, c'mon, doll, play along. Guess what showed up on my doorstep this morning?"

"A dead guy?" she asked dryly.

"Nope," he chirruped. "We left _that_ on the concrete last night. Guess again."

"Sack of cash?"

"No."

"New makeup order for you?"

"Nope."

"Death threat?"

Elizabeth lifted her head from the pillows when he didn't answer. The Joker was staring at her crossly, pouting like an angry adolescent.

"Fuck you," he huffed, "you weren't supposed to guess right!"

She looked at him for a moment, the childish image of a man beaten at his own game. Shaking her head, she laughed a bit and sat up, pushing her soft bangs to one side of her face.

"So, who's it from?"

"Dunno. It's anonymous," he grinned slyly. "I bet they don't want to give me any hints. Didn't use a return address, either."

"Did it ever occur to you that it's already fucking up your plans to stay in hiding? They know where you live now," Elizabeth frowned.

"Stay in hiding? Where'd you get that idea, beauty? I'm not hiding. I'm like a spider—spin my web, wait for a victim, suck 'em dry."

"I thought you were a cat," she mused.

"I'm omnipresent." He leered at her. She rolled her eyes.

"Think they know I'm here, too?"

"You worry too much, doll."

"I'm just curious," she replied, huddling in the blankets. The sun was gentle and warm this morning. "What's the death threat say?" she asked softly, eyes closed. Elizabeth felt his fingers brush her face lightly. She looked up at him for a moment, her still sprawled across the bed. She was like a cat, limbs splayed everywhere, soaking up the sun. Cats are headstrong, playful, and sometimes cruel, a unique creature living by its own twisted rules. She and the Joker were cats, lean and quick and erratically thinking, sometimes making people fear them, sometimes looking soft and touchable, their warm fur ruffled in the sun. Cats are mostly individuals, but they care for each other, sharing what each cat believes to be their own world, playing and sleeping and walking and fighting together. But every cat can fly solo—it's simply in their nature.

The Joker handed her the letter silently. It was typed, not handwritten, as if this might make a difference.

_You stupid bastard, you've killed my family. My wife is still alive, but she's dead inside, afraid of you every day, you awful fuck. My kids hide in their beds early, too scared to look out their windows. NO one has the nerve to watch the news anymore, too worried they'll hear your laugh again or see your hideous sliced-up face. Everyone jumps when the phone rings, and now my wife won't even look up at the sky—she's too vexed that she might see a bloodied helicopter or a spiral of smoke. The police aren't catching you fast enough; I'm the only one who's picked up on your trail. So I'm coming to get you, sick freak, and I'm going to blow your brains out before you hurt anyone else._

_Watch your back._

_-Your worst nightmare._

"Huh," Elizabeth said, handing it back. "They really hate you, don't they."

"I make a lot of enemies the way I operate," he replied happily, hitting a button on the radio that sat silently on the night-stand. Bob Marley cried through the speakers. Elizabeth beamed.

"_You_ listen to Marley? And Annie Lennox? You've got a lot more to you than I thought."

"He's one of the most inspirational musicians in world history!" the Joker exclaimed. "And yeah. Everyone thinks a villain is just a villain, we all spill blood the same way, we all think and kill and breathe the same way. Everyone thinks we all sat the same things, dream the same dreams, and intend to kill the same civilians. But see, I listen to good music, I don't kill every person I meet, and I _burn_ money when I steal it."

Elizabeth couldn't help but feel a bit of affection towards him, despite the cruel things he did sometimes. She smiled and leaned back into the pale tan pillows, warm and silky.

"Mmm," she murmured, her eyes fluttering closed again, fingers interlocked behind her head. The Joker was leaving, closing the door quietly behind him, continuing to sing Bob Marley loudly as he danced down the hallway. She listen to his rough voice croon in the next room, and she laughed. Elizabeth knew he wasn't all bad, though he could be a pretty twisted, awful, manipulative killer.

"_Cause every little thing is gonna be alright,_" he sighed happily in the hall, his footsteps fading as he tripped down the stairs. Things faded into one of those hazy, half-sleep morning dreams. Marley-induced, sun-drunken images floated through Liz's mind, something to do with Lennox song quotes and the Joker saying with a bloody blade in his hand, "_every little thing is gonna be alright…_" Elizabeth woke and saw the clock blinking its little red digital numbers at her. 10:00 already? Grumbling, she fell out of bed and prayed he'd left her some clothes today. Luckily, a black solid tee and denim shorts were draped carelessly across the foot of the bed. The shirt was dark and fit her snugly, hugging every curve and emphasizing the slim shape of her stomach. The shorts were comfortable—she slipped on a pair of track shoes she'd been wearing when he found her. Liz was intent on going for a run today, and the Joker sure as hell wasn't going to stop her. Bob Marley had been turned off, and on the top of the radio was a note.

_Out to investigate my "worst nightmare."_

_Don't get naked without me, doll._

_--Scarface_

She rolled her eyes, turning the music back on. Of course, he'd switched it to Annie Lennox—now she first heard, "_I used to be a lunatic, from the gracious days…_" Elizabeth sighed heavily and slipped a belt through the loops on her shorts.

"_Desire, despair, desire—so many monsters_," she sang with Lennox, lacing up her sneakers and turned the volume on the music down. She wasn't sure when he'd left or when he would get back. She scribbled on the back of his note—

_Out for a run and some heavy thinking._

_Don't cut anyone up while I'm gone, Scarface._

_--Elizabeth_

_PS: you only wish I'd get naked, with or without you._

She left it on the kitchen counter, picked up an apple an headed out the front door. Making sure to look the door behind her, Elizabeth hit the street, hard. Her shoes tapping against the concrete was one comfort she'd always hold onto; something familiar. After a while, she felt the sweat tingle across her face, and noticed she hadn't even stopped to glance at the houses. In fact, they were all close to as glamorous as the Joker's mansion. A couple of the other houses had barred windows, too, and lawns an unnaturally bright shade of green. Trees arched up, finely trimmed to ugly, store-bought perfection, roots carefully patted into the mulched circles. The sun beat down on Elizabeth as she kicked a stone at the wrought-iron fence guarding the front of a four-story beast of a house. Open windows revealed huge rooms, void of people (no doubt driving their gas-devouring sports cars out to expensive restaurants for brunch) and full of luxury furniture.

She shook her head and started to run again, head down and legs rippling with muscle and perspiration. Elizabeth was slight, but strong, tan and blonde—but she was far from "most girls". Her hair was bleached and shaggy, and took little styling, but fell no farther than halfway down her neck and had been cut asymmetrically with a razor. She would rather wear black than pastels, though she loved bold colors and loud prints. Liz never blended into the crowd, and she liked it that way. Her smudged, blackened-chocolate eyeliner always made her eyes look blessed with heavy shine, rimmed with curious thought, and glistening an even brighter shade of gold. She was confident, but quiet unless it was an important conversation. The Joker was pushing her to be her strongest, her smartest, her sharpest. She was cynical, and humorous if the people were right for it. Elizabeth was the straightforward type, and wouldn't keep her mouth shut just because you told her to. She had always been tough, rugged, a pretty young thing with a strong side, and she could be as independent as independent comes. Now twenty-two, she was still young, and the Joker was three years her senior. Ever since her teen years, she'd followed instinct and an adventurer's senses. She walked where people were afraid to walk, spoke when everyone else had run out of words, and saw things through a veered perspective.

After all, the Joker didn't just grab any old good-looking girl.

Elizabeth had hit a cul-de-sac, a dead end. She turned on her heel and doubled back, running the same steps as she had before. Checking her watch, it was already after eleven.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath, and pushed the envelope, running faster than usual. Arriving at the mansion in twenty minutes flat, she tugged feet out of shoes and splashed cold water onto her reddened cheekbones. Shaking her hair furiously, she cursed at the lines of sweat etched across her shirt. She switched on the bathroom fan and decided to take a shower, hoping to wash last night's images from her head. The water came on scorching hot, the way she liked it, and Liz stripped off the shirt and shorts. Feeling the soft _click_ of the clasp on her bra come undone, she padded across the bathmat and into the shower. She tilted her head up to the silver showerhead, letting the hot water 

pour over her. The sweat erased; Elizabeth pushed her drenched hair out of her face and slathered soap over every inch of her body.

Sighing, she couldn't help but remember the strangled expression on Glenn's half-mangled face, his screams and the tears in his voice as he pleaded for mercy. She couldn't help but remember the grim silence on the way home, the way the Joker didn't even look at her. She knew he didn't feel guilty or self-conscious for finishing off an old rival—so where had his joking, short-tempered laughter gone? Elizabeth wondered what had been going on in his mind when he gripped the wheel tighter than ever, his eyes fixed to the road, where the Mercades's headlights only showed ten feet in front of them. She wondered if the Joker got like that after every kill; or maybe it was her presence that drove him to madness and stiff silence?

All of a sudden the shower curtain was thrown open. Shrieking, Elizabeth stumbled back against the marble wall of the shower. Catching her breath, she crossed her arms across her chest and shielded herself from his eyes. He giggled elatedly, joining her under the water and steam, still wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants.

"One _inch _of privacy, could you?" she growled in annoyance.

"Save water, shower with a buddy," was all he said.

Suddenly he'd put his hands over hers and pressed her to the wall, his kisses falling all over her. She suppressed a moan and felt her body crumple at his touch. His makeup ran furiously down his face, washing down the drain. Through his now-soaked white shirt, his skin was tan, though scarred in several places, and muscled perfectly. Elizabeth threw back her head and bit her lip until it bled.

"What else," he ran a slow, pink tongue along her sun-kissed shoulder, "could I ask for?"


	7. Scarface

Chapter Seven

They sat in the huge screen porch, both wearing only towels (and him, his soaked clothes). Hair dripping on the wooden lawn chairs, Elizabeth stared out the wide glass window. The door into the house was now locked from the inside; Liz had already shot one of the goons when he stumbled by drunkly and hooted at her. ("How are your men so disposable? Why don't you get mad when I shoot them?" she had asked the Joker, hanging the gun back to him. "They get shot for good reasons," he'd answered. "And they aren't too hard to find outside of this black little city… always referring their friends…") It was still only barely noon, and neither knew what to do with the rest of the day.

"Do you get death threats often?" Elizabeth asked finally.

"Nope. Everyone's too scared to threaten me. So this is exciting," the Joker laughed. She watched him stretch like a dog, wrap his towel around his hips and get up to leave. He unlocked the door and stumbled through the dining room, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him. Elizabeth carefully tucked the bath towel around herself and followed him. He was unbuttoning his shirt as he went, and she had to admit she was curious. Well-toned muscles, a white scar ripping across the middle of his back. His shoulders were perfectly carved, like a statue, giving way to lean but elegant arms. To be honest, stripped of his makeup and his forest-green dyed hair hanging in wet ringlets around his jaw, he was handsome. His eyes still glittered dark and devious, even without the circles of facepaint. The Joker sang as he went up the staircase, swiping at the streaks of water on his chest.

Elizabeth followed him, mildly, her bare feet drying on the carpet. He entered his bedroom—or so she assumed it was—and closed the door behind him. She dropped her towel and began to dress, stepping into her shorts, pulling on the shirt. The Joker opened his door, now wearing a dry blue shirt, a black vest, and dark blue jeans. His hair had been towel-dried, but his face was still bare.

"How was your search for Death Threat Guy?"

"I spent five minutes standing in the lawn with a knife in my hand going, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are!', gave up and went out for a drive. How was your run?"

"Nice. Your neighbors look like bitches."

"They are. Did you meet 'em?" he said, starting to slather white facepaint on his cheeks. Elizabeth shook her head.

"Nah, but I just got that vibe that they're spoiled brats when I went by their houses." The Joker was drawing black raccoon circles around his eyes; Liz took the eyeliner out of his hand and drew a fine line around her lashline.

"Don't mind sharing makeup with your lover?" he remarked smugly. Elizabeth scowled.

"Trying to ignore that. And you're not my lover."

He pouted at her, picking up a plastic container full of blood-red cream makeup. He drew lines, with his fingertips, over the scars. Liz watched him, thinking hollowly again about Glenn and the night before.

"Why'd you have to kill Glenn last night?"

"An eye for an eye, doll."

"Makes the whole world blind," Elizabeth said.

"Are you really asking _me_ why I killed someone? I usually don't need much of a reason. This time, I even had one. And my goal is to break society… I want the world to go blind."

Elizabeth fought with herself inwardly, wondering if it would be pointless to hold onto any compassion at all. Plugging in a hairdryer, she started to work the water out of her hair. She wished it was that easy to shake a thought from her mind.

Hair dry, she put her fingers on the curve of his spine, tracing muscle and bone until she found the bump of the long, rigid scar.

"How'd you get the scar?" she asked quizzically.

"Honey," the Joker laughed, "asking where I get scars from is a one-way ticket to Hell, if you know what I mean."

"Take me there, Kharon."

He grinned furiously at her.

"Well," he began, "it's a funny story…"

"Will I think so?" she asked.

"Probably not," he said sadly, "no one ever does but me."

She sat on the bathroom counter in silence, listening.

"My father was one crazy son-of-a-bitch. That's where I get it from." He winked. "One day when I was eleven I came home from school and he started yelling at me, all drunk and angry. 'Where the hell have you been!' he was screaming, awfully off his rocker, 'Your mother's sick and you ain't been home to comfort her!' So, 'Daddy,' I told him, 'Mom's been dead for a year.' He got real mad then. 'No, you little freak, she ain't dead! I just saw her and she's sick as a dog! You wanna know what's wrong with her?' he asked me. And he pinned me up against the wall and turned me around and made me take off his shirt. 'This is what's wrong… Her back is bleedin' real bad all over the place, and there's this big hole in the middle of her spine, like _this_…' When he was saying that, he was taking a kitchen knife to my back, drawing it across my skin as hard and deep as he felt like. When he was satisfied with the blood he fell over and curled up into a big messy ball, laughing hysterically and looking at the red all over his hands…" The Joker was giggling now, his fingers tapping on the counter. Elizabeth's face had gone dark and solemn.

"Daddy was a raving lunatic," he said gleefully, "thought he saw my dead mother all over the place. Whenever she was bleeding somehow, he showed me what it looked like by recreating it on me. He put a hole through my hand once, from palm out the back, with a metal spike, and left me to pull it out myself. Said someone stabbed mom in the hand. I was fourteen. According to him, I screamed just like her."

Elizabeth shuddered, absentmindedly fingering his scars. He picked up the red facepaint and put his fingers in it, smoothing lines over Liz's unscarred skin. Drawing a big maniac smile on her face.

"But I'd never do that to you, doll," he murmured, looking through her rather than at her. Elizabeth's face screwed up with worry.

"Don't fret, you're too perfect to cut up," the Joker said tersely, snapping out of it. The goofy, psychotic grin took over his face from the inside out again. Elizabeth felt herself relax. He tossed her a washcloth as he walked from the bathroom, and she wiped the scarlet grin from her face, eyes lingering on the mirror.

"Do you do that just to scare me?" she laughed, tripping prettily down the hallway after him. He burst into laughter, obviously back to his usual self.

"That's for me to know, and for you to find out."

Liz rolled her eyes.

"What's been up with you since the Great Shower Fiasco? You've been asking a lot of questions and not laughing enough. It really brings me down."

"Just tired," Elizabeth lied, making a face at him. He licked the side of her cheek annoyingly.

"Hate you," she said, wiping her face and grinning.

"Say that again, and I'll bury you in six different place," the Joker answered cheerfully, as she rolled her eyes.

"I'll alert your worst nightmare of your whereabouts," she challenged him.

"Ooh, sounds like fun," he smirked. "I'll put a pencil through your skull."

"I'll kill Batman."

He grimaced. "I'll strip you naked and shove you into a pit of angry, psychotic perverts armed with scalpels."

Elizabeth gaped.

"I'll take away every weapon you've got, isolate you from society, and leave you bound and gagged in a rubber room," she snapped.

"I'll kill your family and friends and poke three-inch holes in you with a screwdriver."

"I'll put the world at peace with Batman as God."

He was defeated. Throwing his hands up in surrender, the Joker spluttered happily.

"Okay, fine! But I swear I'll get revenge," he purred, and took a flying leap to tumble down the carpeted staircase. Elizabeth peeked over the railing to see him in a tangled heap, shaking his head dizzily at the bottom of the stairs.

"Nice flying somersault," she complimented, sliding down the banister and kicking his head as she passed. He grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her into his lap. She yelped, landed across his legs, sat up and blew the hair out of her eyes.

"You're hopeless, doll."

"So are you," Elizabeth retorted.

They stared at each other for a moment before laughing.

"We're both fucked for life," she declared, getting up. "I want lunch, how about you?"

"I want to blow up an elementary school," he whined. "But it's summer, and they're all hiding in their houses." Elizabeth heaved a sigh and wandered into the kitchen.

"Got anything besides poison apples, Scarface?" she asked boredly.

"Oh, go make yourself a sandwich before I put a bucket through your forehead," he yawned.

"Fine, be a bitch," Elizabeth snorted, sticking her tongue out at him. He reached his fingers out and grabbed it. Liz blinked angrily at him, pulling from his grip. She made a sour face at him as he smirked, looking full of himself with cleverness.

"What's wrong, beautiful? _Cat _got your tongue?"

She walked, barefoot, into the kitchen and opened a few drawers. Liz grabbed a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and made a sandwich. The Joker ambled in across the smooth tile floor, stuck his finger in the peanut butter and sat down, licking his thumb and reading the paper. Elizabeth, chewing, looked over his shoulder. The headline screamed, in ultra-bold print, _**JOKER KILLS AGAIN**_.

"Aw, what the hell did you do this time, Scarface?"

Apparently, he'd shot a deer-hunting rifle at a sailboat in the harbor. After emptying over six rounds, he sunk the ship in the middle of the bay and drowned the passengers. It had taken place this morning at 10:15 AM. _So that's where he was this morning._ Afterwards, civilians claimed to have heard maniacal laughter from the dock. Elizabeth groaned.

"How many this week, now?"

"Eighteen," he murmured wistfully.

"You're gonna kill off everyone in the city," Liz remarked.

"Sounds good to me," the Joker laughed. "Then I'll move on somewhere else."

"Batman would follow," she reminded him.

"Ex-_actly_." He cackled, crumpling the newspaper up.

"He'd follow you anywhere…"


	8. Play with Fire

Chapter Eight

They sat by the crackling fire, upon which the Joker was carelessly tossing crumpled newspapers with blaring, frightened headlines about him. Elizabeth was staring at the flames wistfully, thinking about the relationship between herself and him. And the relationship of the Joker with society, and the Joker with Batman, and all the other interlocking, nerve-racking connections in Gotham City. She had a hard time understanding him, such a blackened man with the most destructive sense of humor she'd ever heard of and a dangerously short fuse. _Elizabeth, you don't want to be here,_ she told herself. _This is a villain's hideout. He's getting death threats. You cannot, under any circumstances, be found with him._ She knew she was lying in her own head, though. Liz had already fallen for the bruisingly harsh man, full of laughter and black magic and a mind to kill anything that moved. If the Joker was ever going to win, it wouldn't be a slight majority; he was going to crush the competition. Annihilate the hopes of the city. Completely shatter the lives of anyone he happened to stumble upon.

Because that was what the Joker did.

Elizabeth straightened in her chair, running lean fingers through her fine light hair. The razored edges flicked out like cat whiskers fluttered by wind. She picked at the glimmering red coat of polish that was streaked across her nails. Muttering something under his breath, the Joker let out a hushed giggle and lit a match.

"Do you know what temperature skin burns at, doll?" he asked her.

"No, and I'd prefer not to find out," she shot back, teeth clenched tight together, heels pushed firmly down into the ottoman. Trying not to fidget, Elizabeth inhaled noisily through her mouth and dove into her book, hiding her whole face behind the lines and lines of black ink. She tried, desperately, to ignore him, paying attention only to the intricate lettering sprawled across the page, but this didn't last long. Her eyes couldn't stay glued to the page any longer when she heard him let out that howling, animalistic laugh. Something like a hyena screaming to its pack, circling in on a kill. Elizabeth had always been disturbed by those creatures—their hunched spines, clever glinting eyes, sharp-fanged panting mouths always open with almost-unhinged, predatory jaws. What really bothered her was how their groups seemed to appear out of nowhere, another one padding out from where they crouched in the grass everywhere you looked, forming a perfect though jagged circle around their victim. And whenever she thought of hyenas, she thought of the sharp, oh-so-personal smile that marked their bloodied jaws, the triumphant screech of laughter after a kill. Elizabeth could almost hear their hilarity echoing through her ears as they cornered her. Per say, she'd never gotten any closer to the violently humored beasts than watching Discovery Channel, but Liz had never been able to wipe the images from her memory.

The Joker sounded precisely like a hyena, a tortured yet gleeful snarl torn across his face, his grin wide with half-silent laughter and pain. Of course, for the last several minutes he'd been holding the flaming match in his palm, letting it burn and burn and burn. It was still smoldering, a white-blue hot flicker searing ash-black slices into his hand. Elizabeth opened her mouth wordlessly, a soundless cry spilling from her lips, and she lunged forward to bat out the flame. The Joker was staring off into space, not twitching his hand or showing any signs of fear or agony. He was gazing, in apparent ecstasy, at the ceiling, his mouth still open, and leering as usual. His face was mindless, and in awe, and you could tell there was not one thing better to him than watching his own flesh burn… except, perhaps, watching someone else's burn.

Elizabeth crinkled up her nose at the smell of smoldering skin, lowering her eyes to escape the smear of hysterics that were smudged across the Joker's face. Liz fiddled with the thick silver ring on her thumb, breathing raggedly and trying to remember the last time she'd enjoyed pain that much. Actually, she could recall it exactly—she had been out running about a month ago, tripping and skidding across the pavement caked with crackling ice and around three inches of snow. As if the hot burn of muscle being made and the cold wash of icy air that whipped at her wasn't enough, Elizabeth had felt her foot slip across a patch of black ice. Her body wrenched forward and she hit the ground, hard, her face tearing on the street and her arms flying out to catch herself. As soon as her hands hit the ice they slipped quickly, painfully to one side, dislocating her right shoulder. Liz sat there screaming with laughter, biting her lip in a strangled smile as the blood streaked in thick red rivets from her cheekbone. When she finally trudged home, she examined the damage in the mirror to find that the skin had been ripped pretty deeply. Elizabeth sat on her bed all night laughing and applying bandages to her stinging face and wishing she'd taken the time earlier to wipe off the blood.

Elizabeth regretted to think that yes, they were a pretty damn good couple. She hated that. It drove her insane.

"Aw, beautiful," the Joker grinned, "don't worry about it. Just another scar."

Elizabeth sat in silence, her eyes still on the slightly dented wooden floor. The flames leapt and danced angrily in the hearth, and the sound of the wood crackling almost sounded like laughter. But then, in that house, everything sounded like laughter. The Joker started to play with a pack of cards again, his fingers etching carefully by card after card, each one a Joker and each one another frighteningly red memory. Elizabeth was sure the Joker had held those cards menacingly, sometimes curiously, sometimes angrily, sometimes thoughtfully. Elizabeth knew that the Joker had no doubt touched those cards with blood on his hands—and he would do it again. She wondered how many times he'd done magic tricks with those cards. She wondered what sort of thing was on his mind when he drew the black bat on that special card. She wondered what would become of the city if the Joker really got his way. She didn't want to picture it.

"There are some things in this world that are simply darker than others."

"You think I don't know that?" She raised her head to glare at him, face screwed up in a miserably bitter expression. "I don't really want to talk now."

"This isn't about what you want, doll."

He got up and smoothly moved to her chair. Putting his hands firmly on the armrests on either side of her, he leaned straight over Elizabeth and looked seriously, deviously, at her. His painfully honest yet doggedly lying eyes reminded her of things she didn't want to remember: the shower, the look on Glenn's face when he died, their dangerous closeness in the car. She tried to look away but his gaze held her, unable to blink or to cry, unable to turn her head. He stared her down like a predator watching its prey—smooth, elegant, hungry. His expression was motionless except for the slight heave of his chest, breath by breath moving up and down in a rhythm much slower than her own. Elizabeth ground her teeth together and stared straight back at him.

"It's about what _I_ want."

Elizabeth huffed and shoved him away. She sat facing the wall now, trying especially hard to ignore him, though he was not distressed in the least. He turned back to his book with eyebrows raised and smile crooked, lighting and blowing out match after match. It appeared that after one moment of 

burning skin, he was content with simply watching the flames. Liz buried her nose in the book again, pretending he wasn't there, pretending she had never shared in the ironic, mortal humor of your own pain. She pretended to not understand the relief and the laughter of destruction; pretended she would never know how funny and humanizing it is to watch yourself bleed. That was a lie. She knew, and all too well; of this, the Joker was proud.

It was also a lie to say she did not love him.

"So, doll—"

"Will you just shut the hell up?"

"I told you," he smirked, "it's not about what you want. It's about what I want."

"No one cares what you want," Elizabeth snarled, her chest knotted up with a dead-end rabbit-paced heartbeat. His green hair fell onto his face a bit more, making his skin look even whiter and his raccoon eyes even darker. His lip curled up in a gleeful, laughing smile.

"No, but they care about what I'll do to _get_ what I want."

Elizabeth froze, thinking. A slideshow of images flew through her mind—Glenn's screaming, the Joker telling her to pick a card, him holding his knife, poison apples, waking up to dark love and Bob Marley… She shuddered and looked away from him, her fingernails digging into the cover of her book, leaving sharp indents where she had clutched the pages with frustration. Elizabeth tried to forget—she was always trying to forget, actually, trying to erase parts of the past that simply weren't possible to get rid of. Perhaps if she lived a more simple life and didn't get caught up in this sort of thing, she wouldn't be in such a mess. She could sleep easy at night again and look at a pack of cards without checking to make sure they actually had numbers on them. Maybe then she wouldn't feel sick to her stomach when she looked at an apple and could finally read horror stories again. But reading them, now, was pointless. Why read about a terrible bloody life when you were already living one? She was in a nightmare. Trapped in the house of a villain who killed as many as they wrote about in the books. She was living with the man responsible for the wreckage on the front page of the paper every day.

And, goddamn it all, she really did love him

"How," she said, besmirched, "could you do the things you do?"

"It's fun." The Joker shrugged at her, clicking on the TV. She reached for the remote and turned it back off.

"You fucking kill people, Joker. I don't even know your goddamn name and I'm living in your house. Sharing your sweat and hearing your laugh. I hate it. I hate it. I hate you."

"You love me," he corrected gleefully.

"Yeah."

"Ooh, I love it when I'm right."

"But I hate you as much as I love you," Elizabeth spat, trying not to look at his face.

"_I love the girls who love to hate, because they're just like me._"

"What, now you're quoting Escape the Fate? You're sick." She huffed and slid down in her chair, watching him haughtily. He beamed back at her, his face alit with a devilish, wordless smile. She was so used to his laughter, she almost didn't hear it this time. Almost.

"If you play with fire, Joker—"

"Yes, I'll get burned." He held up his hand triumphantly, to remind her that the burns were as fun to him as it was to play with fire. He loved consequences. They were always fun. They always hurt. And they always made people upset.

"I don't understand you," Elizabeth murmured.

"No one does, doll," he breathed, taking her fingers in his burned palm and laying a violently red kiss on the back of her hand. Elizabeth felt her chest tighten and her face flush, and turned her dark, troubled eyes back to her book.

"Now… w-where was I?" she choked, vision clouding and mouth screwed up in a tangled expression, pretending that when she looked at the page, she actually saw something.


	9. Jack of All Trades

Chapter Nine

There was very little about summer that Elizabeth liked. It was too hot, too sweaty, too full of children playing and people shopping. Kids screamed at their summer camps, and people reclined under their huge umbrellas, pouting fake pouts and sipping lemonade daintily. She hated all the sprayed-on tans, fake-looking plastic sunglasses and women hiding seductively under their big straw sunhats. But honestly? The real reason Elizabeth hated summer so much was because something awful seemed to happen to her every summer. When she was six, she fell down a well and had to be fished out, trembling and still silently screaming, by the fire department. Two summers later, her dog was hit by a car, throwing the rest of her summer into a spiral of misery and paranoia. And during the eleventh summer of her life, she lost the most important thing she'd ever had.

It was late into the deepest hours of a hot, black July night. The sky was dark and peppered with flaming white stars, none any larger than a grain of sand to a man's eyes, and the trees whistled with a crisp sizzling wind. The black-blue ocean lapped at the cliff-side by their summer house. Elizabeth was awake, somehow, waiting for the daylight hours to creep, like they did every day, into the house through wide curtain-edged glass windows. She really wasn't much of a night person, never had been and never would be, always fearing the explicit blindness she was thrown into. Always rather unnerved by the way the moon wavered like a curtain of shimmering, sharp glass over the whole world. She was always living in the constant, restless worry of things that she could not see but also could not prove to not be there.

And see, when Elizabeth was afraid of things, she could not simply bury herself in the sheets and thrust her little blonde head into her pillows, go to sleep and dream of kind, soft things. By the time she had reached the age of eleven, she of course had tried to do this countless times, each night waking up from awful, twisted dreams that curled and snarled like the grotesquely tangled roots of an old tree. The only thing that consoled her at all was feeding her curiosity like a fire. So, damn near every night, she got up and padded around the house, clutching a long warm blanket to her chest and letting it drag behind her on the polished wood floor. She would look around warily, stepping quietly as a cat, her ears wide open to catch even the slightest sound. If she heard anything, particularly the eerie screeches and yowls of the little owls that lived around her house, she jumped. The little girl would drop to the floor and hide beneath a chair or a table, her heartbeat thickened with fear and her eyes darting suspiciously around the room. There was nothing worse, for her, than the heavy, labored breathing that accompanied her frantic pulse.

It was that night, July 17th, when something terribly interesting happened. She heard a rasping, painful cough from the next room and dropped instinctively to the floor. Elizabeth crawled, quickly, silently, to hide beneath a blanket that was draped off the couch. The summer-house was almost always quiet in the evenings, aside from some of the small, scurrying wildlife that dwelled outside the walls. Her parents were sound sleepers, and they left their two cats with an old family friend whenever they vacationed. The problem with Elizabeth was that she was awfully inquisitive. Whenever she heard a noise and scuttled to a safe hiding place, she didn't duck her head and wait it out. She couldn't bear to cover her eyes and pretend nothing had happened. She absolutely had to leave a crack from wherever she was, to peek out and look around. Being so young, she hadn't yet learned to grasp how this habit could backfire. She hadn't ever seen anything horrific that would make her want to close her eyes forever. She hadn't ever actually caught sight of anything bad when she peered out from her shelter beneath chairs or pillows.

But soon enough, she would.

Elizabeth, curious as ever, let her golden eyes flit across the room, skim over the floor and linger on the doorway. She huddled motionlessly under the warm wool, stiffening as someone's footsteps clunked and plopped across the wooden boards. She softened as she recognized her mother's legs and short argyle socks, though from where she hid she could see no higher than the woman's knees. She was a hundred times more at ease knowing what the noises were. However, there was something that made Elizabeth stay still and exactly where she was, rather than tripping out of the blankets to hug the warm young woman. And it wasn't her fear of being caught up so late. There was a sort of ominous vibe that swirled around her mother's presence, and Elizabeth for some reason was able to acknowledge it. Her eyes following the staticky sock-swathed feet as they disappeared into the kitchen. A few heartbeats later, the raucous coughing started up again, and Liz cringed at the mere sound of it. It was not ordinary coughing, or even the cough of someone with a cold. It was the cough of someone very, very sick.

Elizabeth crept out from the blanket, slithering on her hands and knees across the floor and pressing her body tentatively against the wall that separated the dining room from the kitchen. She poked her head into the next room carefully, and saw her mother hunched over the sink, breathing so heavily that it made her whole body quiver with the ebb and flow of air. She looked old and frail, and though she was barely twenty-seven she had the air about her of someone nearing their last days. Her thin frame was racked with the coughing, her small mouth open and her jaw lax. Elizabeth blinked again and again, watching her mother brace herself against the counter and slide onto the floor. The only thing Elizabeth could really see was the red that covered most of the sink. Hearing a _tip-tap-tip_ sound, the girl bolted into the kitchen to see only a terrified, pained figure convulsing on the floor. Elizabeth barely noticed her own screaming as she crumpled to her knees, gripping her mother's sweat-slicked arm and trying to stop her twitching. The woman only shook and shook, hollow and empty and silent, a line of scarlet traced down the side of her cheek.

Elizabeth's father rushed into the room and froze, his eyes moving from the reddened sink stained with more blood than seemed possible, to the folded-up heap on the floor that was his daughter. He swung her up into his arms and pressed her against his chest, and Elizabeth was even more frightened by the way even his leathery, wise cheeks were wet with fast, furious tears. He set her down roughly and told her to go to her room. The girl stumbled out but could only make it to living room before she fell, drenched with tears and with misery, and threw herself into the pile of blankets. She could hear the eerie sounds of her father's screams from the other room, and she pictured the way he would pick up the bloodstained body from the floor, his arms shaking, his face darkened with absolute despair. Elizabeth found herself in a dream, running through a hallway of all white, white walls and floors and ceiling, except for a single sink filled with blood. Although she knew she was asleep, she still heard her father screaming.

The whole house filled with the feel of death.

--

Elizabeth crashed out of her sleep, her whole body painted with a thin film of sweat. She'd had that dream again, the one she had for once in many years managed to avoid for more than a month. But that lucky streak was over, and she was back to the dream of the hallway with the blood sink. She'd been having that dream since she was eleven years old, and she was absolutely sick of it. Even now, as a grown woman, it still shook her terribly. She always woke up sweating or screaming, and the images of her mother doubled over the sink refused to leave her mind for hours, sometimes days. It was hard not to be haunted by it, naturally, especially since being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

After a minute or so, it registered in her brain that someone was playing a piano. The notes drifted up to her room from downstairs, a distant sort of music that reminded her of the way her father used to play the organ. Whenever her father had played it, his hands always seemed so graceful yet so troubled, as though all of his emotions could fall straight through his fingertips. His face would twist up into a thoughtful grimace, and he would play such beautiful music that made her want to cry. He stopped playing it when the therapist told him to try letting go of the past. The piano that sung with crooning sound drew Elizabeth out of bed, and she absentmindedly slipped on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Tiptoeing down the stairwell, she leaned against one spice-colored wall and listened to the Joker guide his fingers swiftly across the keys. His face seemed softer than usual, and she wondered what he was thinking. As usual, his facepaint had been smeared to a sort of terrific perfection that almost made her smile. Almost.

"How was your sleep, doll?"

She blinked once, then twice, because she hadn't thought the Joker had seen her walk in. But then, there were a lot of things she had thought the Joker wouldn't notice. And every time, he did.

"Terrible."

"Aw," he stated carelessly, his fingers dancing amusedly across the black and the white, making music that seemed far too beautiful for someone as cruel and as dark as him to create.

"I didn't know you played piano," Elizabeth murmured wistfully. He half-nodded, looking up at her but continuing to play.

"I'm a jack of all trades; or if you prefer, a Joker of all trades." A toothy grin spread across his face. Elizabeth scowled listlessly, twisting her hair around her fingers. The Joker shrugged his shoulder towards the kitchen. "Pancakes on the counter," he yawned. "Go eat."

She obliged him, wandering across the tiled floor and plopping down in the big armchair. Flicking on the TV, she stood for a moment to get a fork and the plate stacked with sizzling circles of gold-pressed pancakes. Elizabeth chewed slowly, watching the news reporters talk about creepy graffiti that was being etched across the city. Practically every building in Gotham had been stained with blood-red spray paint, and each of the instances was about the Joker.

Surprise, surprise.

_The Joker will die_, the most memorable of them said. Elizabeth stifled a bitter laugh.

_No_, she thought. _The Joker will never die._


End file.
